Zombie

A reporter (Ian McCulloch) helps a woman track her missing father to a tropical island plagued by zombies.

Despite its title, Zombi 2 isn’t a sequel to anything. According to the IMDb, the producers discovered an unrelated film called “Zombie”, scheduled to be released at the same time, and added the ‘2’ to differentiate the two films.

That said, Zombi 2 is a pretty solid zombie picture. While the initial sequence in a New York harbor shows a lot more promise than the story realizes, Zombi 2 doesn’t leave you feeling burned.

The cinematography is spectacular. The crisp colors and sharp compositions belie the film’s low budget, and the underwater shots are a refreshing addition to the genre.

While none of the performances are outstanding, none are really bad either. McCulloch does a fine job as the defacto lead, but the real stars here are the zombies.

And what horrific zombies they are! Director Lucio Fulci stages several truly disturbing scenes, including an eye-impalement that clearly inspired a similar scene in Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror.

The script runs a tight 91 minutes and does a good job of closing the various plot holes it opens along the way. Granted, it does cut a few corners, such as having the sole character that can’t hit a six foot shark from ten feet away always have the only gun, or having the same character inexplicably not aim for the zombies heads, but the ending is very satisfying, and goes a long way towards making up for the other shortcomings.